Aftershocks
by Quinn the Jedi
Summary: They were warned of feeling the darkness when they sacrificed themselves to the nemeton to save their parents, but that had been wrong. They unleashed it. Set between 3A and 3B, slow-burn Sterek, and all sorts of mysteries so no more warnings.


They were warned of feeling the darkness when they sacrificed themselves to the nemeton to save their parents, but that had been wrong. They unleashed it.

Set between 3A and 3B.

Aftershocks

Chapter 1:

"This is ridiculous. We should be out there too." Allison's voice was a shaky whisper beside him, hand propped against the dash as she tried to peer out the back at the dark forest beyond.

"Excuse me? Out there? I signed on to be a lookout, not to go and get eviscerated in the woods." Lydia trilled from the backseat, leaning her side against the back of Allison's seat as she aimed a bored yawn out one of the windows. Stiles couldn't help but agree with her, drumming his fingers nervously against his steering wheel as he watched the darkness. The cab of his jeep was quiet except for the restlessness of its inhabitants, engine and radio off, only the scrape of Lydia's nail file and the creaking of Allison's pleather jacket filling the silence.

Derek and Cora had returned not long after the fiasco with Jennifer and the Alpha pack. He had been trying to bring his sister to safety, but their journey was cut short as they began getting attacked at every motel and truckstop between here and wherever the hell they'd been going. Whoever was hunting them had tracked them back to Beacon Hills and it hadn't taken long for Derek to figured out where they were holed up, honing in on the abandoned railway station on the outskirts of town within days.

He'd assembled their ragtag pack of supernaturals to hit the lair while it was empty for information, calling on Scott and Isaac for backup while he and Cora did some werewolf recon. Allison had been right at Stiles' side when he threw a fit at not being including, Lydia somehow getting roped into lookout duty with them when Derek and Scott finally conceded.

Cut to the three of them sitting in his jeep for about a half hour on the dirt road leading to the tracks, pulled off in a small gravel turnaround, faced back the way they came. He should feel offended that he's been relegated to the outfield with the rest of the women, but it turned out to be more species discrimination than gender. Derek had strictly forbade humans from the train station while they did their thing; excluding badass hunter/human Allison, mostly-human banshee Lydia, and painfully-human human, Stiles. At least they were still being somewhat useful out here.

"Can we at least crack a window? I'm getting a headache." Allison rubbed at her forehead absently, eyes still trained out the back of his jeep, fixated on the faint outline of the train station's roof beyond the hill. She was making him jittery, her anxiety radiating off of her in waves, the way she kept her eyes locked on the building made him expect it to blow up at any time.

"I don't think we need to provide grubby werewolf claws a good handhold so they can rip my door off." Stiles had a momentary vision of her and Lydia being pulled through the jeep's windows kicking and screaming; yeah, no. Not on his watch. He sighed heavily and stared out at the seemingly endless darkness stretching ahead of them, wishing to god their town would invest in some street lights.

 _ **Stiles**_

"Not that this hunk of junk couldn't do with a facelift." Lydia drawled from the backseat.

She was oblivious to his startled flinch as she spoke, continuing to file her nails lazily as if she hadn't heard the disembodied voice whisper his name. Well, it hadn't so much whispered, as much as it sounded like someone had said his name urgently from a great distance, somehow ringing in his ears. He whipped around for the source and found none, looking between the two girls in discomfort as they didn't react to it.

"What?" his confusion was taken for ignorance, Allison sighed at him in a way that was both kind and condescending, gesturing around them vaguely.

"C'mon Stiles, you have to admit this thing is pretty ancient."

He was distracted by his outrage, his mouth dropping open at her. "Ancient? Of course it is, it's a '76 CJ5, this thing is an unadulterated _classic_. Just because it isn't a- wait, no. No. I was talking about before that, you guys didn't hear it?"

Allison's eyebrows drew together, frowning slightly. "Hear what? I didn't hear any-"

"Shh!" Lydia whispered harshly at them, nail file frozen in the air, eyes roaming the cab. They both turned to look at her, exchanging a glance after she didn't move for almost a minute. Stiles opened his mouth to speak and she held up a hand without looking at him, her voice wavering slightly. "Can't you feel that?"

After a few moments, they did; a slight vibration in their seats and beneath the soles of his sneakers, like a faint earthquake or a violent thunderstorm. Seconds later it hadn't faded, growing slowly and steadily, the metal walls of his jeep beginning to hum with its intensity.

"Oh not good, not good." Stiles gripped his steering wheel until his knuckles were white as the rumbling increased, the ground buckled beneath them, noise reaching a deafening level. Allison was yelling but it was lost in the chaos, trying to wedge herself in a stable position, Lydia thrown sideways in the backseat as the jeep pitched violently, letting loose an unholy scream. The fractured pitch barely pierced through the din, Stiles fought the urge to let go of the wheel to cover his ears, the combined noise impossibly loud and painful.

All at once, a thick cloud of darkness gathered in the distance, slithering and roiling and spilling its way over to the jeep across the road. Stiles flailed at it in panic, gaping stupidly. "Lock the doors, lock the doors!" he chanted at them, slapping them in the shoulders and pushing the manual locks down on his door and the door behind him. Their faces were sickened and slack with fear, eyes wide as their fingers scrambled to follow his instructions; an instant later and it was on them.

There was a distinct thud as it smacked up against the windows, as if the smoke had a tangible force behind it, the violent tremors shuddering through the ground lessening as it enveloped the vehicle. It blacked out every window, _thank god he hadn't let Allison open them,_ the pitch of the rumbling beginning to grow deeper. Stiles began to think of all the ways magic smoke could kill them; it could smother them through the vents, lift them up to drop them to their deaths, could crush them all into a very unsexy Allison-Stiles-Lydia sandwich, not to mention countless other horrifying alternatives, all at any time.

He didn't know what else to do, he hit the horn.

For an impossible moment he thought he saw the smoke rear back from the front windshield, as if it had been startled; he hit the horn again, locked his arms and laid on it with both hands. The smoke churned furiously as if he'd angered it, which he was pretty sure he had; the darkness beginning to slowly drain from the back of the vehicle towards the front like furious rivers of steam. The deafening roar began to drop to a thunderous rush, the jeep's thrashing abating as the cloud coalesced at its hood, darkness pooling to slowly form a figure.

"Oh my god." Allison's voice was thick and hoarse from screaming, back pressed against her seat in horror or revulsion. Acting, the time for acting was now.

He slammed the center of his wheel with his left palm, his jeep's horn bleating angrily as his fingers fumbled for his keys in the ignition, the shadowy form's head tilting away from it in irritation. He found his keys, frantically turning them as the figure began to move to his side of the car. In his panic, he didn't let the engine turn over enough before releasing the keys, the engine choked silent once more.

 _ **Stiles**_

Eyes flashed red outside his window and he jumped away from the glass with a yelp, his breaths in ragged gasps as he reached blindly for the starter again. The engine coughed to life as the earthquake demon, or whatever the hell it was, rounded the end of the jeep; Stiles prayed for some kind of luck in his eternally cursed life and threw it in reverse.

There was a shudder of movement as though the vehicle meant to go backwards, moving less than an inch before being stopped and slowly, sickeningly, lifted off the ground.

Lydia clutched at the head rest in front of her, whining in terror; Allison was wild-eyed beside him, emitting soft noises of concern. Stiles stomped the pedal to the floor but could find no traction, back tires spinning freely in the air. He caught a flash of red amidst the blackness in his rear view mirror and he knew, with startling clarity, that the girls were just bystanders in this. It hadn't come for them, they were just in the way; it was after him. And it was going to shred through his jeep and both of them to get to him.

"Allison, you're gonna get in my seat." he grabbed the shift knob and threw it in gear, "You're gonna hit the gas and as soon as I'm out hit this button." he stabbed a finger urgently at the four-wheel drive, other hand jerking up the lever to recline his seat and throwing it back.

"What?" she yelled at him in disbelief, instinctively grabbing the wheel and hooking a foot over the driver's side as he scrambled into the backseat, "Stiles!"

He felt Lydia's fingers on his shoulder, trying to stop him as he wrenched up the lock on the back door; he shook her off and grabbed the crowbar at her feet, jerking the door open to fall out in a tangled mess of limbs. The ground was further than anticipated and his head narrowly missed his back tire as it started to whirl, splattering mud on his face and neck as he rolled out of its path. He struggled to his feet and heard the four-wheel drive engage behind him as the front tires started tearing up the gravel, not chancing a look behind him despite the loud thud and shrieking tires. He put his head down and sprinted across the road towards the woods, sneakers pounding dirt, heart thundering in his chest, death grip on the crowbar in his left hand. He didn't bother luring it after him, he knew he didn't need to.

He darted into the treeline and took off through the forest, his jeep roaring along the road past him, _headed the wrong way_ , back door open and swinging with no pursuer in sight. He couldn't hear if the figure was following him as he ran, but he could feel it; an oppressive presence bearing down on him from behind, spurring him faster in the lightless woods. He ran until his lungs ached, branches whipping him in the face and catching on his flannel, keeping his legs high with each stride to clear logs and briers in the dark. He caught himself squeezing his eyes shut to block out each fresh slice in his skin, running blind; he had never ran so far or so fast in his life, and it would most likely be the first and last time he did so.

A suicidal thought crossed his brain and he found his feet slowing to a halt of their own accord, heart rabbiting in his chest and blood rushing in his ears as he felt the ominous force close in on him. He couldn't run forever, and to be entirely honest, he was sick of running entirely. The last time he ran and let everyone else handle problems their way, his dad almost died.

He spun around to face the gathering darkness at the edge of the clearing, slowly giving way to the form of a person, not as tall as he'd initially thought. Shadows billowed above and around it, looming over Stiles' head and churning furiously. He swallowed the lump of fear in his throat and felt dread settle in his stomach like a stone, grip tightening around the metal of the crowbar in one hand and nails biting into his palm in the other.

"All right spooky, what's the deal." he shouted, trying to cover the shaking of his voice with volume, "You here to eat me? If so, there's a waiting list."

Three full seconds had passed after the echo of his voice faded through the trees and Stiles had to fill up the space, "I mean if not, that's way preferable. You wanna have a talk about pack relations? I'm cool with that, definitely doable. I'll put the crowbar down if you take off your living demon cloak."

The shadows above him seemed to pulse menacingly at the comment, he licked his lips nervously and edged half a step back, "Sorry, sorry, no offense." He thought back to Jennifer Blake, Darach, all the dark magic he'd seen as he shakily assessed the being before him; they hadn't seen anything like this in anything they'd come across before, even in research. Could this thing even speak?

The weight of the crowbar was a constant reminder of its existence, edges biting into his clammy palm. He gripped it tighter so it didn't slip, a minuscule movement that caused the darkness to swell momentarily. Far off to the right there was a distant howl, Stiles' head jerked in the direction of the sound. Had he imagined it? Wishful thinking?

An answering howl sounded off somewhere behind the figure watching him motionlessly, joined with more echoing calls from his left, too far to be of any immediate help, but they were drawing closer. He drew strength from the howling of the pack, the knowledge they were looking for him emboldened him. The darkness before him took a step forward and Stiles' heart began to hammer out of his chest, planting his feet firmly in the moss.

"Yeah? We gonna do this? C'mon boogeyman, have at it." he held the crowbar firmly in front of him with both hands, twisting it in his grip. He barely recognized his own voice as he taunted the thing, "Let's go!"

It hesitated five or six feet away from him, the faceless shadows lazily tilting the hazy form of its head at him. It was a very unnerving thing for it to do. There was another fierce pulse from the darkness that hovered around it, this one had an impact; vibrations smacking Stiles in the chest, an overwhelming surge of sensations flooding through him with the indirect contact.

He'd rooted his feet as an act of defiance, to prove he couldn't be intimidated, but now his legs were frozen, trapping him in place. The vibrations hummed through his skin and set his flesh alive with sensation, the slight breeze ruffling the hair on his forearms felt like it was ripping at the pores. The air burned his eyes until he had to squeeze them shut, heart pumping furiously as darkness seemed to utterly envelop him, icy tendrils of fear crawling through his veins. Waves of indescribable emotion whipped through him; terror gave way to rage and grief, loss and hatred crippled him, fury fueled him and rocked him to the core.

Unbidden memories swept over him, inescapable despite pressing a fist against his temple. Distorted fragments of betrayal and rejection, ignored phone calls and stood-up dates, missed pack meetings no one noticed, thankless research and sleepless nights, unacknowledged desperation for approval and acceptance. Flashes of Allison's glances at him bordering on pity, the leers of the alpha-douche twins. Derek slamming him against a row of lockers, Lydia's sighs of boredom and disinterest. The predatory gleam in Issac's eyes thinking about tearing apart the girl he loved, the perpetual annoyed frown Cora aimed at him. Scott's screams about how much Lydia wanted to fuck him rang hollow in his ears; he ground his teeth and pried his eyes open despite the pain.

The shadowed figure had advanced further, a foot in front of him, the dark shape of an arm raised to pull his hand away from his face. He didn't have time to process what was happening before the smoke encircled his wrist, unbearably hot and scalding his skin, a scream caught in his dry throat. His flesh felt like it was bubbling at the contact, he tried to wrench himself away, boiling heat flooding up through his arm.

There was an entirely foreign sensation that spread through him, not unlike pain but more like an acute awareness of transcendence. At one moment, the world had shapes and edges and forms that made sense, the next, everything bled into each other in a smearing of color and emotion and chaos. The ground breathed up at him in puffs of burnt orange and comforting reassurances, trees billowing black and rattling with anger that tasted like licorice.

The boogeyman had broken his mind. And apparently all his other senses too. The darkness' grip on his wrist was like a vice, struggling was useless and all energy had been sapped from his body anyway. There was a momentary flicker of hopelessness and despair that rippled through him, he flinched bodily as if he could physically escape it, fingers twitching around the metal bar dangling loosely in his left hand.

His eyes widened with realization he'd kept a hold on the weapon, summoning the remainder of his strength to grip the crowbar tightly, swinging wide to smash the figure in the face. For a fragment of a second the bar passed through the shadow of the figure's cheek before connecting with something solid, snapping its head to the side and releasing its grip on him as it stumbled from the force of the attack. The searing heat of its touch abated and left his skin throbbing in its wake, Stiles flung himself backwards without proper use of his legs, falling in a heap on the forest floor. He scrambled back up in a cloud of dirt, choking on wafts of cinnamon and nutmeg as he tripped up the incline ahead of him.

The creature was left reeling and clutching at its face below, shadows folding themselves in on the singular form, furious red eyes flashing up at him. A howl erupted from behind Stiles and he jumped, falling against the tree at his side and throwing his undamaged arm around it to keep from toppling over. He barely caught a glimpse of the blue-eyed werewolf that shot out past him into the clearing, catching the shape in its side and sending them both tumbling out of sight in a flurry of shadow and claws. Time to run.

 _ **Stiles**_

The voice chased his thoughts as he fled, his limbs disjointed and ungainly, shaken from the attack. The crowbar swung dangerously as he pumped his arms, catching his thigh as he ducked under low-lying branches, running without direction by the slivers of moonlight slicing through the treetops. The muscles in his legs burned, his stomach was knotted tightly, each whistling breath ripping through his spasming lungs. His ears pricked at the howling in the distance growing further, gritting his teeth and increasing his pace. He counted four distinct pitches, different from the one that had come from the werewolf who had protected him. Was Aiden and Ethan out here too? How many werewolves did they freaking have in Beacon Hills?

He could feel the gathering darkness behind him again, the oppressive presence looming closer with each pace, despite his speed and intensity. There were no sounds of a pursuer, no protector about to spring from the woods to save him; he was going to get himself murdered by a cloud in the forest and prove everyone right about how useless he was. He was aware of the fog thickening around his feet and swarming behind him to creep around either side, rivers of inky darkness reaching closer, radiating heat and intent. He swung the crowbar violently around him with a battle cry as he ran, ripping through the steaming shadows with an angry hiss.

"Screw you!" he screamed, the darkness closed around him and he fell, thrashing and slashing in wild arcs, the crowbar wrenched from his grasp and cracking over his head. A white-hot light split through his skull and burst against his eyelids, and he blacked out.

End Chapter 1.

PS- yes there will be sterek, yes I'm already on chapter 2 :) leave some love kids xoxoQuinn


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